The first signs of recovery? What 7 May told us about the Conservatives’ electoral position   

Amélie Bamford, Consultant 
21/05/2026

It goes without saying that Kemi Badenoch assumed the leadership of the Conservatives at a moment of considerable political difficulty, with the party still reeling from its worst ever general election showing. The results of the recent local and devolved elections were – even eighteen months into her leadership – always going to be as much about the legacy of 14 years of Conservative government as the work she has done since November 2024 to try and reverse the party’s political fortunes.

The loss of over 500 councillors and control of six councils points to a party that remains some distance from anything that can be called a recovery. While Labour’s heavier losses provided a degree of political cover and the subsequent battle for the Labour leadership has kept media attention on the Government, there is plenty of evidence that the voters used 7 May as an opportunity to kick out at a political status quo which they see the Conservatives as still being very much a part of.

There were some positives, particularly in the few remaining parts of the country which can still be called a straight Labour vs Conservative fight. Regaining control of Westminster Council and depriving Labour of their majorities in Barnet and Wandsworth demonstrated that the party can still capitalise on Labour’s unpopularity, particularly in urban areas where the Reform vote is small.

However, any attempts to frame the overall outcome as the beginning of sustained momentum surely overstate the limited progress that was made. While the party’s successes in London carry symbolic and practical value, they also underline the party’s increasingly concentrated electoral strength. The recent quip that the Conservatives are becoming ‘the Liberal Democrats of the right’, hemmed into a narrow geographical and social base that befits perpetual minority party status, carries a plausibility that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

Kemi Badenoch has certainly improved her Parliamentary performances since last autumn, including a strong display in last week’s King’s Speech debate, and her personal rating has now been above that of her party for some time. Yet the failure of either of these factors to translate, at least for now, into a recovery at the ballot box shows the strength of the structural challenge the Conservatives now face.

The first is the consolidation of Reform as the predominant electoral force on the right. Under Nigel Farage, Reform is no longer operating merely as a vehicle for protest votes. Its gains, including across the South East, challenge the Conservatives’ long-standing claim to be the default choice for centre-right voters in their traditional heartlands.

The rise of Reform is just part though of a broader fragmentation of the British party system driven by the increased volatility of the electorate; something which led, for example, to the historic scale of Lib Dem gains from the Conservatives in 2024. Any party simultaneously having to fend off attacks on both flanks is bound to find that strategic dilemma difficult to grapple with.

The Conservative Party has known significant electoral reverses before. Even after 1997, when the party had to endure three defeats before it achieved a sustained turnaround in fortunes under David Cameron, the one factor which kept the party viable as a prospective governing force was sustaining their monopoly on the centre-right of British politics. Reform has upended that assumption in the last two years, and for as long as immigration remains a top issue for voters, and memories of the last government’s failures in this area persist, the route back for the Conservatives remains very tough.

However, political volatility can work both ways. The Conservatives are still polling well when the public is asked who they would trust to run the economy. With a potentially difficult autumn looming, as the lingering effects of the Iran War threaten to drive up inflation and unemployment, who’s to say that at least some voters won’t start to give the Conservatives another look. Either way, at the moment it looks like it will take a big external development which forces the electorate to reconsider how they view the different parties, combined with the party’s opponents making some significant mistakes, to get the Conservatives back in the game.